Abstract

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Michael Spooner, like many of the young people in his generation did, like many academics and alternative types do, turned 17 and moved along. Editing found him in Illinois in the 1980s, luring him with the promise of windowsills with pots of violets, scotch-laced lunches, Chesterfield straights, and the opportunity to be positioned as a friend of texts-in-process, manuscripts before they're neat and clean and bound, manuscripts when they're writers who are working through ideas. He was coaxed by the mountains and Joyce Kinkead to head to Logan, Utah in 1993 where he breathed life into Utah State University Press, increasing annual acquisitions from three books a year to over twenty, providing the opportunity for some of our most important and foundational texts to shape our community and field.